Sometimes it’s due to heredity and at other times its just hormonal and aging that creates a chubby belly in many women. This is especially true for women who have gone through menopause.
Gaining fat in the abdominal area can be one of the unhealthiest locations for fat gain. The extra tube around the stomach leads to an increase risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and many types of cancers.
With strategic life-style changes and targeted abdominal exercises your chubby belly fat can be brought under control or eliminated completely. What causes such accumulation of fat around the belly? Age causes your metabolism to slow down thereby causing an increase in the amount of fat that your body stores.
The storage of body fat is higher in women than in men. After menopause, the distribution of body fat shifts and you will find more fat accumulation around the abdominal area than you do in your arms, legs and hips.
The most dangerous belly fat is not the fat that you can grab with your hands. The real culprit, visceral fat, lies deeper inside your abdomen, surrounding your abdominal organs. This type of fat is linked to severe health problems such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
The subcutaneous fat is located between the skin and abdominal wall although more visible is not likely to cause any health risk.
Although visceral fat lies deep within the abdomen targeted tummy exercises such as pelvic lifts can help to firm the abdominal muscles and flatten the belly. Daily, moderate exercise is the best way to reduce belly fat.
Losing weight while toning abdominal muscles will help to slowly burn off belly fat. Strength training and changing unhealthy eating will be necessary if you want to effectively fight unwanted belly fat. Reducing your intake of simple carbohydrates such as breads and pastas and increasing your portions of fruits and raw vegetables are important changes in diet to help rid your body for belly fat.
